EVENTS

$700 Billion Greedfuck Moneygrab Bailout Plan

It boggles the mind that we’d even consider turning over that kind of money with no strings attached to the SAME EXACT GREEDFUCK ASSHOLES WHO FUCKED EVERYTHING UP IN THE FIRST PLACE!!!!!!!! The details of the greedfuck moneygrab financial bailout remain to be seen, but the motherfucking Congress better not fuck this shit up!

Nor were you paying attention two weeks ago, two years go, in 1989, or in 1929. Well, ok, you probably weren’t paying much attention to anything in 1929, but you might have remained awake in history class.

Things that could be done for $700 billion dollars:
– permanent base on Mars;
– supply clean water and medicine to the whole of Africa;
– buy every remaining tiger an F-16 fighter jet;
– build a 20 metre high fence along the US-Mexico border out of $100 bills;
– make a stack of pennies twice as high as the fucking moon.

To the great detriment of my mental health, I have been reading as much as I can about the financial bailout plan in order to get some understanding of what is going on. I think I can grasp the fundamentals of the problem, what is completely unclear to me are the potential ramifications of the various proposals. I thought I was starting to get it from some of what Chris Dodd was saying earlier last week but now I am back to being utterly confused. Why do we have a complete lack of competent leadership in this country? On the other hand, at least I was able to make out that those 100 rethuglican house members are complete morons… capital gains tax! hilarious!

what is completely unclear to me are the potential ramifications of the various proposals.

The reason it’s unclear to you is that it is unclear in general. No one has any fucking clue what would or wouldn’t happen with or without this “bailout”. The only thing everyone knows is that financial institutions hold a massive shitpile of bad bets that looked good a few years ago. Now that they realize these bets are worthless, they are looking to unload them on the US taxpayer.

One of the reasons there is a “seizure” of the financial markets is as a game of brinksmanship with the government. The financial institutions do not want to trade the shit they are holding at fair value, because they are betting (well, the bet clearly has paid off, with it looking like the bailout is going to proceed) that the govt will buy the fucking garbage at way more than it is worth. If the govt made it absolutely clear and certain that they were not going to buy the shit, you’d see the finanacial institutions begin to trade the shit themselves, take their haircuts, and move on. (Maybe.)

the draft bill is available on CNN. I’m gonna try to dive into it tonight to see what is there…

I don’t mind taking on some “toxic” assets so long as the govt (us taxpayers) retains the assets that have value. My preliminary understanding was that there were roughly 100 billion in these toxic assets that were tied to 600 billion in additional assets. If the 100 billion go, the 600 billion go with them (to whoever gets the entire company that fails). Presumably the govt can take on those assets in their entirety and sit on the viable investments until they come around. What I’m not sure about is: since the 100 billion are largely bad mortgages, can they could be reworked so that they eventually make money? Obviously all this is overly simplistic, but I’ve been writing all day and can’t bear to write any more.